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As anticipated, the remainder of the KX3 build did not take long at all.  If truth be told, I am technically not finished – I still have to calibrate the roofing filter. But I am done to the point where I have a working radio.

I left off at the point where I had to install the battery holders and the KXAT3 auto tuner.

That is them installed.  I am not sure if I am going to bother with internal batteries.  The option is available to me if I ever decide to; but that li-on battery I bought is so small and light!  And if I don’t have to open the case – that makes me happy, also.  You can see the auto tuner to the right.  Here’s a close up:

It’s quite a piece of work!  Once I turned the KX3 on, I had to go through the menu and select it so that the radio “knew” it was there.  The tricky thing was that once you turn it “on”, for the first time, you have to turn the radio off and then back on, so that it initializes with it there.  A bit different than selecting options with the K2.

Next came the roofing filter board:

There it is, right behind one of the battery holders. When you install the KXFL3 you have to take out one of the chassis screws.  It is replaced with a much longer one that actually extends through a hole in the KXFL3 circuit board.   This is to prevent the roofing filter circuit board from becoming jostled loose accidentally if the going gets rough on the trail.

Then came connecting the two halves with the ribbon cable, which was a snap.  Connecting the battery holders to their connector and then mating the two halves together and buttoning the radio up.

The first thing to be done was to hook up the battery, cross my fingers and say a small “No smoke, please!” prayer.  When the moment of truth arrived, the display came up and static came out the speaker. No smoke, no disasters, no disappointment.  From there, it was off of the workbench and onto the shack table we go!

I hooked up the DCP paddles and antenna and made a contact on 20 Meters in whatever 4 land QSO party is going on this weekend.  I have it written downstairs; but I think it was K4SAV. Second QSO was on 40 Meters – G5LO in Great Britain.

There’s going to be a learning curve here because this is definitely more complex and sophisticated than my K2.  For now, I just want to make a few QSOs and play around a bit.  I will intensely study the Owner’s Manual and will probably try to calibrate the roofing filter tomorrow.  Right now, it’s back down to the shack to play!

Thanks to all of you who went for this ride with me, beginning last year, when I started saving and selling things to raise the needed funds.  Thanks for sticking with me as I ordered and began the, what seemed to be, interminable waiting period.

Now that the radio is built and seems to be working, I can truly say it was worth the wait and am looking forward to many hours of fun filled QRPing.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to say the very least!

I have a bunch of chores and chauffeuring to do today.  I probably won’t get around to continuing the build until this evening.  To paraphrase John Lennon’s quote: “Real life is what happens while you’re busy making Ham Radio plans”.

However, here are a couple of thoughts about the progress so far, for those of you who might be inclined to get one of these but are undecided.  This isn’t meant to sway anyone either way – just some observations.

The assembly manual is superb.  No ambiguities at all.  Each step is very clearly outlined.  If you have any questions, they are always readily answered on either the regular Elecraft reflector or the KX3 reflector.  It’s a big community.  Even though the number of kits shipped so far has been less than the number of factory built units shipped, the Elecraft folks and the Field Testers are quick to supply answers.

Elecraft was super quick to answer my query about missing screws and supplied me with a tracking number the next day.

In the opening pages of the manual, the words appear “Even easy for first time kit builders”.  This is true – don’t think that just because you’ve never built a kit before that you can’t undertake this.  I know that the price point can make the effort seem foreboding, but it’s really not. 

Do make sure to do the parts inventory, though.  I am sure the missing screws incident is due to the haste to get product out the door.  As the opening rush subsides, I am sure missing parts will become rare.  I ordered my K1 and my K2 way after the initial release and neither of those kits were missing anything. Indeed, I had excess screws which are proving to be a real life saver now.  But in the meantime, if you have ordered a kit and will be getting it soon – DO THE INVENTORY.

Hopefully, I’ll be posting more photos later tonight.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

The build continues.  So far I have put about 2 hours into this.  While I’m not quite done, I can see this being done in the 2 hours that Wayne mentioned on the KX3 reflector.  But being uber careful, I am going slow and really taking my time (and also taking time to take photos).  At this point I am “basically“ finished.  I still need to install the battery holders, the auto tuner and the roofing filters.  That won’t take long.  While I am done for the night, I should have this completed and will hopefully make my first QSO (God willing and the creek don’t rise) tomorrow.

This is what the top half looks like from the back. You can click on any of these photos to get a larger image.  The speaker and VFO encoder are towards the top right.

Here’s a close up of the speaker hooked up to the CP board.  Directly below that is the VFO encoder (and shield).

Here’s the finished top half.  If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the plastic bezel you will see where I have a temporary “make do” silver screw holding the bezel down.  This is where I was shorted one screw. I will put a black one in whenever it arrives from Elecraft.

This is the RF board in the bottom housing.  That big black square to the upper left is a magnetic shield.  Things are really crammed onto these circuit boards, I can only imagine the effort it would take to build these boards as a “conventional” kit.

This is the BNC connector. It was a bit tricky to get this in, as with the RF Board in place and screwed down you have to finagle the connector part way into the hole, then get the lock washer and nut in place and started.  Then you have to push the BNC to its final resting place against the chassis wall while simultaneously tightening the lock nut.  There’s just not a lot of space!

Here’s the two final transistors tightened down to the chassis/heat sink area.  This is another area where you have to be careful as Elecraft makes sure to mention (with a big caution) not to disturb that electrolytic capacitor.

So far this has been real easy as kit builds go.  The assembly manual is superbly done. The hardest part so far was installing some nylon screws for the rubber feet.  You want to make sure you get the screws started at exactly the right angle so you don’t end up cross threading or otherwise mucking up the screw threads.

And except for that one silver screw at the bezel, I have been able to make do and keep the build going using those extra screws I had left over from my K1 and K2.  Kudos to Elecraft for basically staying with the same hardware so that my “junk box” screws blend right in.  The hardware that I have coming from Aptos will go to replenish my “extras”.

The bad side of all this ????  This is really making me want a K3 now!  Maybe if I sell off some of my baseball memorabilia collection …………….

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

I did a complete inventory of my KX3 hardware and am sad to report that I am missing some screws and lock washers.

I sent off an e-mail to Elecraft letting them know what was missing. Normally, I wouldn’t even bother, I’d just go off to Home Depot or Lowes to pick up equivalents, but these screws are black. That means they are going to show from the outside, and I don’t think either store will have black hardware.

I might have to stop off at Greenbrook Electronics on the way home from work tomorrow, in the off chance they might carry black hardware.

I know what you might be thinking, but no …….. I made sure to do the inventory in a box top, so that nothing could roll off the table and on to the floor – or worse.

To their credit, Elecraft sends a small bag of “spare” hardware. Unfortunately, nothing that I need is in there.  I will try to start the build tomorrow night, but I think right from the get go, I am going to need some of these missing screws.

Heavy sigh.

Hmmmmm ….. the good news is that I may only be one screw short.  In a burst of inspiration, I went down to the basement to the parts drawer where I kept screws that were left over from my K1 and K2 builds.  I think I can make do until the missing parts arrive.  Moral of the story? Don’t throw stuff like that out!  But don’t become a hoarder, either – yes, I know it’s a fine line!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least.

On Sunday afternoon, while the WPX contest was still on, DX Sherlock sent me an email to say that there was a possibility of Sporadic-E propagation on 4m from my location. Getting equipped for 4m is something I’m going to have to leave for another year – right now I’m not steady enough on my feet to go clambering about in the attic making additions to my antenna farm. But I do have a 6m antenna, though it’s only a dipole. The KX3 was plugged into it, so I had a tune around 6m, heard a few stations and managed to work OK2OV with 59 reports both ways. Not bad for 10W to an attic dipole.

Station of OK2OV, Czech Republic (from qrz.com)

I was quite tired after my session in the CQ WW WPX contest so I called it a day. The following morning DX Sherlock sent another email alert to say there was possible Sporadic-E on 6m. I quickly switched the KX3 on and sure enough, there was a big Sporadic-E opening in progress. I made 18 contacts in all into France, Spain, Italy and Slovenia and heard OK2OV for a second time. Some of the signals were absolutely enormous and I received 59+ signal reports. This was with 10W of SSB to a dipole, remember.

Hopefully there will be more Sporadic-E fun before the end of summer.

Last weekend was the weekend of the CW version of the CQ WW WPX contest. I am not a serious competitor as it isn’t really practical with attic antennas but I like to come on for the big contests to give away a few points and see what I can work. (Perhaps they should create a special category for stations with indoor antennas. 🙂 )

I only managed about an hour on Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday as I easily get tired out. But I thought it would be an opportunity to put the KX3 through its paces. Although I don’t plan on sending in any more than a check log, when operating QRP I like to adhere to QRP power levels, so I limited the KX3’s output to 5 watts.

Other bloggers have written that conditions were good for the contest, but I thought they were poorer than in previous years. True, there was some activity on 10m this year. But on 20m it seemed I spent more time searching and less time pouncing than on previous occasions. And I didn’t hear any US stations at all. Perhaps I was just operating at the wrong time.

The KX3 performed superbly hooked up to KComm, my simple logging program for Elecraft transceivers. I logged 30 QSOs with 29 prefixes and 13 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. My short term memory is abominable – I forget a serial number the moment I stop to send my serial number to the other station, so I really appreciated KComm’s ability to read the text output by the KX3’s built-in Morse decoder and print it up on the screen.

So that was the CQ WW WPX CW 2012 for me. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to make a more respectable show.

and probably other countries, too. It’s for when things don’t work out quite up to your expectations. The phrase that is used is “Guess I’m a day late and a dollar short”.

I have to make an alternative.  “Guess I’m a day early and a dollar up!”  Because, when I came home from work today; and looked down while I was unlocking the door – this is what I saw:

‘Twas sitting right there, on the front stoop – waiting me to pick it up and bring it inside. And it arrived a day early!  According to the e-mail that I had received from the folks in Aptos, I was not expecting this until tomorrow.

Upon opening the box, I saw now nice and neatly everything was packaged:

The errata sheet, followed by the manuals (building and owner’s) and finally the boxes containing the goodies underneath.

As long as this has taken, I am in no glorified, all Hell bent, gotta-get-it-done-now rush.  I am going to spend tonight clearing off my worktable in the shack, and will take some time to re-read the construction manual – again.  Right now, if nothing comes up out of left field, I am anticipating construction being completed over the next two evenings.

Pictures and details to follow.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!